He Has, Notwithstanding, Been Employed By The Illustrious House To
Which He Is Said To Be Related In More Than One Delicate And
Important Mission, Both In The East And The West, In Which His
Efforts Have Uniformly Been Crowned With Complete Success.
He was
now collecting masterpieces of the Spanish school of painting,
which were destined to adorn the saloons of the Tuileries.
He has visited most portions of the earth, and it is remarkable
enough that we are continually encountering each other in strange
places and under singular circumstances. Whenever he descries me,
whether in the street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst
Bedouin haimas, at Novogorod or Stambul, he flings up his arms and
exclaims, "O ciel! I have again the felicity of seeing my
cherished and most respectable B-."
CHAPTER XVI
Departure for Cordova - Carmona - German Colonies - Language - The
Sluggish Horse - Nocturnal Welcome - Carlist Landlord - Good Advice -
Gomez - The Old Genoese - The Two Opinions.
After a sojourn of about fourteen days at Seville, I departed for
Cordova. The diligence had for some time past ceased running,
owing to the disturbed state of the province. I had therefore no
resource but to proceed thither on horseback. I hired a couple of
horses, and engaged the old Genoese, of whom I have already had
occasion to speak, to attend me as far as Cordova, and to bring
them back. Notwithstanding we were now in the depths of winter,
the weather was beautiful, the days sunny and brilliant, though the
nights were rather keen. We passed by the little town of Alcala,
celebrated for the ruins of an immense Moorish castle, which stand
on a rocky hill, overhanging a picturesque river. The first night
we slept at Carmona, another Moorish town, distant about seven
leagues from Seville. Early in the morning we again mounted and
departed. Perhaps in the whole of Spain there is scarcely a finer
Moorish monument of antiquity than the eastern side of this town of
Carmona, which occupies the brow of a lofty hill, and frowns over
an extensive vega or plain, which extends for leagues unplanted and
uncultivated, producing nothing but brushwood and carasco. Here
rise tall and dusky walls, with square towers at short distances,
of so massive a structure that they would seem to bid defiance
alike to the tooth of time and the hand of man. This town, in the
time of the Moors, was considered the key to Seville, and did not
submit to the Christian arms till after a long and desperate siege:
the capture of Seville followed speedily after. The vega upon
which we now entered forms a part of the grand despoblado or desert
of Andalusia, once a smiling garden, but which became what it now
is on the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, when it was drained
almost entirely of its population. The towns and villages from
hence to the Sierra Morena, which divides Andalusia from La Mancha,
are few and far between, and even of these several date from the
middle of the last century, when an attempt was made by a Spanish
minister to people this wilderness with the children of a foreign
land.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 123 of 424
Words from 64701 to 65233
of 222596